This chapter outlines three important choices for assessments. The chapter starts by talking about the benefits of portfolios. One of the benefits that the book highlights is the fact that teachers can collect work and examine it over time which means that teachers don’t have to make as many inferences about a student’s mastery based on single samplings. Another important thing that I learned about portfolios is that they are a wonderful mirror for students to see their own development and take charge of their learning. The biggest benefit that portfolios have is that they promote the ideals of differentiated classes. The next choice the book highlighted was rubrics. I learned that they can be difficult to make and that there are many things that need to be considered when creating rubrics such as what the task requires, what consists as proficiency in the task, and whether the criteria is clear for the person who is performing the task. The chapter also tells the reader how to create a rubric. This will have a big impact on me in this class. Since we will eventually have to create rubrics, the tips that this chapter gives will help me create one. The last thing that the chapter talks about is self- assessment. This is extremely important because it provides feedback and helps the student and the teacher set individual goals. Knowing that these three methods of assessment work well in a differentiated classroom will impact me when I am creating lesson plans and making sure that my class is a differentiated classroom.
Cheyenne
This was a fairly short chapter that went over a few different methods of grading and assessment, namely student portfolios, a couple different kinds of rubrics, and student self-assessment. The book kind of made it seem like teachers should only use one of the three, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to mix and match, especially when using student self-assessment. Portfolios are extremely useful when looking at students work as a whole. With portfolios, a teacher is able to see how students’ work has evolved over a period of time, and it is much easier to see where they have improved. It’s also very easy to add self-assessment onto that. Students can also look back on their work, see how they have improved, and comment on it. It can also give the teacher insight into where the student’s main focus was in their work, as the student would be more likely to comment on something they take personal pride in having improved.
Rubrics are also very useful, and I always preferred having a rubric to reference when working on a project. When done correctly, they give students insight into what the teacher is looking for out of the finished product. It gives students a clear understanding of what is expected and can guide them on the path to achieving it. Rubrics also easily allow a place for self-assessment. Students can assess where they think they’re score on each rubric point, and can then match it up with the teacher’s score.
It is even possible to use all three together. For example, in an English course, rubrics could be used for individual assignments, and then at the end of the semester/year, students could put together a final portfolio, which would include revised versions of each of their larger writing projects and a self-assessment requiring them to evaluate how they believe they have gotten stronger in their writing over the course of the class.
Dominick
Chapter 4 discusses the three most important ways of assessing students. The first is portfolios. This a great assignment for students to do because students can record their progress in the class and have an idea of how well they are doing with understanding the material. This is also great for the teachers because they will be able to see how the students have developed throughout the course. Teacher will easily be able to see if students have progressed or regressed with the class. The great part about portfolios is that any class can use them. This makes the portfolio in my opinion probably the most valuable of all three different types of assessment. Rubrics are also considered to be important for students because these give a basic outline as to what the students need to do in order to achieve a good grade. However, the issue then comes up about whether or not the student can cheat the rubric. Can a student still do good on the project without knowing much about the subject? That brings up another point that also suggests that the use of rubric could be flawed. What if there is a student that understands the material, but can not adequately demonstrate the use of knowledge according to the rubric. What qualifies as evidence that the student understand the material? The rubric needs to be done right if it is to be affective. The third assessment is student self assessment. This is important because this assignment provides insightful feedback from students, it helps students and teachers to set goals. Journals and/or learning logs are a good thing for students to have when doing this.This provides a perspective from the students which is important when trying to be a good teacher.
Cory
This chapter referred to three different kinds of assessment: portfolio’s, rubrics, and self-assessment. I feel that all of these can and should be used in all subject areas as they all provide certain things that not much else does. I personally really like the idea of portfolios. Portfolios are compilations of student work done throughout a certain period of time, that be a semester, and school year, or even multiple years. I really like it because it shows off student achievement. I remember enjoying looking back at portfolios in high school when we were done with them. It was nice to see that I actually accomplished a lot of work throughout the semester, and some pieces of work reminded me of some fun memories I had in that class or what was going on in my life at the time I did it. Yes, not all materials will be very nostalgic, but it is a very good tool for teachers and students alike. They both can use it to track their/the student’s progress. One can track improvement by looking back at old work, and portfolios put all of the work in the same spot for easy reference. The other two things, rubrics and self-assessment, are both things that almost every single class I have taken had. They are nice additions to classes, but at this point I almost expect them. Rubrics are necessary so students know exactly what is expected of them, and self-assessment will foster future growth of a student.
Lydia
There are three types of assessment that should always be used in a classroom. Those three things include portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. These three things are important because a student can reflect back on what they learned with a portfolio, get feedback from a teacher with a rubric and give themselves feedback on what they think they can do better on the next assessment. These are all assessments that go out of the box compared to standardized testing yet they all show student, parents, and fellow teachers what a certain student has learned and shows how they can apply the knowledge to what they enjoy. I think this will affect my classroom because students get a learning experience that they can get multiple ways of feedback and will want to look back over the year of what they have accomplished and what they can do better for next time. Out of the three assessment strategies I thought it was interesting how they laid out the rubric process for differentiated instruction. If I am a teacher that only gives standards for the highest grade possible and nothing else students will want to meet that mark because there are no other exceptions or expectations. This will affect the class because students will try to get the most out of the learning experience instead of trying to figure out what the minimal amount they have to do to pass the project. As a teacher this will affect me because I will see students wanting to learn more and I will know that I should not give students the idea that they can only do minimal work to pass. This will show the students that I am here for them and that I want them to succeed on their assessments.
Shane
In this chapter we are shown the three main ways to assess students. We can assess our students through portfolios, rubrics and self assessment. None of these were really all that surprising because this is how I have been graded for years. This chapter basically breaks down into why and how we are supposed to use them. As a future teacher I liked the idea of portfolios more than anything. As a social studies teacher it would make sense to keep all of the work students have done over the semester because it should all correlate. If we are trying to account for each student as an individual learner, I personally believe giving them a rubric with set goals to hit seems a little too clipboard. We need to account for learning style too. Each student is going to learn differently, having a more open ended assessment like a portfolio just makes more sense to me. In a portfolio we can look at the progress that starts from the beginning and see how the student reached their goals from start to finish. In a portfolio we can see the not only the growth but the consistency of the work and see how well students are actually mastering the content that we have gone over. Students can reflect and self assess their progress from here as well. I personally believe a portfolio gets across the big picture.
Sara
In chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal we look at the three main types of assessments. Portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment are all very important and useful tools for a teacher to utilize. A portfolio allows students to collect their work over a set timeframe and put it all together in one piece. This makes it easier for students to see the progression that they have made over this time period and helps them reflect on what they have learned. It also allows students to be creative and show their personality by designing the portfolio their selves. While portfolios are very useful in the classroom, I don’t see myself using them very often in the math classroom. I don’t think a portfolio is the right type of assessment for that setting and it could be confusing for students.
Rubrics are a huge part of communicating with students what is expected of them. It is important that if a teacher is going to have a rubric that it be clear and concise, and truly state what the teacher wants. Rubrics can be very helpful for students if they are done correctly, however a poorly written rubric can be very bad for a student while doing any type of assignment. I am the type of person who enjoys knowing exactly what is expected of me so I do think I will use rubrics quite often in my classroom.
Self-assessment allows a teacher to see how a student is thinking and what their thoughts on their progress is. This can be very helpful because it allows a student to be honest and teacher can see if there are areas the student needs to work on or if a particular subject that they are struggling in. Because there are so many concepts in math I see myself using self-assessment frequently so students can reflect on themselves.
Katelin
This chapter I found to be very important to me in my teaching techniques. I am not sure I really believe in tests completely, so finding different types of assessments I can use and how to effectively use them to assess a student is really important for me. Portfolios are a really good way to have a student to have to reflect on their own work and think of it as quality, and not just a rushed product. They have to look at what they have accomplished and learn, and show others their accomplishments and understandings. Students can set goals and take charge of their learning. This is a great way to look at the mastery of students progress in class and they are a nice, simple thing to show parents. Rubrics are something that all students seem to be familiar with regardless of what class they used them in. I am not sure on what my thoughts really are on how often I will use these in my class. I like the idea of being consistent in grading and making sure the rubrics don’t have loopholes where the students aren’t clear on where their work will fall under. I absolutely love the idea of student self assessment and students assessing how the teacher has done. Students really do not realize they need to improve without looking back on their work. The problem is, I know when I was in school and I was told to assess myself, I wrote down any stupid thing I could find. I would need to prove students how important it really is for them to find something they can really work on and try to encourage them to do so, also find something they did really well and keep doing that.
Cooper
This chapter goes over three different methods of assessment portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. Each of these have a place in the classroom, but the two that stuck out to me specifically were portfolios and self-assessment. Portfolios intrigued me because not only are they a great way for students to measure progress and visualize their growth and hard work, but it also is a great way of introducing organization into the classroom. As someone who is not necessarily geared toward organization I will try to welcome any opportunity for bringing those aspects into my classroom as I come across. By making students catalog their work not only would I be giving them the opportunity to view their work as a collective, but hopefully broadening my own horizons as a multi-faceted educator. In addition to portfolios I also thought self assessment was an interesting method to use in the classroom. I think it’s important student’s look at their own work critically and don’t just feel they can hand it in and forget about it. I think this could definitely play into using portfolios, when students look at all of their work put together they can assess how far they have come in the class and maybe about what goals they were or weren’t able to reach. I personally don’t see these methods as exclusive and I could see myself employing all three and probably many others in my future classroom.
Laura
Although it wasn’t stated, I’m assuming that it is best for teachers to use a combination of the three types of assessment (portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessments) discussed in this chapter. I especially like the idea of portfolios, but I’ve never really liked rubrics. However, because they are so different from each other, they are probably each useful in their own way. In my future classroom, for example, I might use portfolios to gauge the progress of my students’ writing abilities while using rubrics to grade the individual pieces that go into the portfolio. I would definitely place more weight on the grade of the entire portfolio, however, versus the grade of each individual piece. I like to think of rubrics more as guides for students than strict criteria for which they will be graded. I understand that it’s important to be consistent, but if a student reads too much in a rubric, they may “settle” for the average requirements just to get a decent grade and not take the time to push themselves to hand in their best work. As a student, I often found (and still do find) rubrics to be confusing and daunting. Sometimes I wouldn’t even read them thoroughly because I felt like I would rather just put my best effort forward and “hope” that met the criteria. I’m assuming there are others out there like me, and I’ll keep that in mind as a teacher by not relying too heavily on rubrics. I will value the final form of assessment that the chapter discussed, student self-assessment, because it will give me an idea of what my students feel they are capable of along with how they view their own work and effort.
Rhi
This chapter was very straight forward. First it discussed portfolios and how helpful they can be for keeping record of student work and the analyzing of a students learning. In another class we discussed ways to better incorporate health into our classrooms. I think that adding a health aspect to a portfolio would make tremendous changes in how our students health is evaluated. Not many schools take into consideration the overall health of their students. It’s not only important to teach students academics, it’s also important for them to be focused on healthy foods and keeping active. If a student is not healthy, it is hard for them to focus on academics because they are focused on other things, such as: hunger, weight, fatigue, distractions, etc. All of these can be improved just by helping our students to understand what is important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It is hard for many families because they think that all healthy food is expensive, but there are ways for students to get the nutrients that they need on a low budget. This is an area that I believe health teachers need to focus more on, which is helping our student’s parents in finding what foods are reasonably priced instead of just sending home a paper of fruits and veggies their child should be eating. We have to work with these parents to create healthier diets for the students, so instead of them feeling like they’re failures and teachers are just trying to tell them how to parent, we set up a teacher-parent trusting relationship where we find the happy medium and want what’s best for the students.
Table of Contents
Sarah
This chapter outlines three important choices for assessments. The chapter starts by talking about the benefits of portfolios. One of the benefits that the book highlights is the fact that teachers can collect work and examine it over time which means that teachers don’t have to make as many inferences about a student’s mastery based on single samplings. Another important thing that I learned about portfolios is that they are a wonderful mirror for students to see their own development and take charge of their learning. The biggest benefit that portfolios have is that they promote the ideals of differentiated classes. The next choice the book highlighted was rubrics. I learned that they can be difficult to make and that there are many things that need to be considered when creating rubrics such as what the task requires, what consists as proficiency in the task, and whether the criteria is clear for the person who is performing the task. The chapter also tells the reader how to create a rubric. This will have a big impact on me in this class. Since we will eventually have to create rubrics, the tips that this chapter gives will help me create one. The last thing that the chapter talks about is self- assessment. This is extremely important because it provides feedback and helps the student and the teacher set individual goals. Knowing that these three methods of assessment work well in a differentiated classroom will impact me when I am creating lesson plans and making sure that my class is a differentiated classroom.Cheyenne
This was a fairly short chapter that went over a few different methods of grading and assessment, namely student portfolios, a couple different kinds of rubrics, and student self-assessment. The book kind of made it seem like teachers should only use one of the three, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to mix and match, especially when using student self-assessment. Portfolios are extremely useful when looking at students work as a whole. With portfolios, a teacher is able to see how students’ work has evolved over a period of time, and it is much easier to see where they have improved. It’s also very easy to add self-assessment onto that. Students can also look back on their work, see how they have improved, and comment on it. It can also give the teacher insight into where the student’s main focus was in their work, as the student would be more likely to comment on something they take personal pride in having improved.Rubrics are also very useful, and I always preferred having a rubric to reference when working on a project. When done correctly, they give students insight into what the teacher is looking for out of the finished product. It gives students a clear understanding of what is expected and can guide them on the path to achieving it. Rubrics also easily allow a place for self-assessment. Students can assess where they think they’re score on each rubric point, and can then match it up with the teacher’s score.
It is even possible to use all three together. For example, in an English course, rubrics could be used for individual assignments, and then at the end of the semester/year, students could put together a final portfolio, which would include revised versions of each of their larger writing projects and a self-assessment requiring them to evaluate how they believe they have gotten stronger in their writing over the course of the class.
Dominick
Chapter 4 discusses the three most important ways of assessing students. The first is portfolios. This a great assignment for students to do because students can record their progress in the class and have an idea of how well they are doing with understanding the material. This is also great for the teachers because they will be able to see how the students have developed throughout the course. Teacher will easily be able to see if students have progressed or regressed with the class. The great part about portfolios is that any class can use them. This makes the portfolio in my opinion probably the most valuable of all three different types of assessment. Rubrics are also considered to be important for students because these give a basic outline as to what the students need to do in order to achieve a good grade. However, the issue then comes up about whether or not the student can cheat the rubric. Can a student still do good on the project without knowing much about the subject? That brings up another point that also suggests that the use of rubric could be flawed. What if there is a student that understands the material, but can not adequately demonstrate the use of knowledge according to the rubric. What qualifies as evidence that the student understand the material? The rubric needs to be done right if it is to be affective. The third assessment is student self assessment. This is important because this assignment provides insightful feedback from students, it helps students and teachers to set goals. Journals and/or learning logs are a good thing for students to have when doing this.This provides a perspective from the students which is important when trying to be a good teacher.Cory
This chapter referred to three different kinds of assessment: portfolio’s, rubrics, and self-assessment. I feel that all of these can and should be used in all subject areas as they all provide certain things that not much else does. I personally really like the idea of portfolios. Portfolios are compilations of student work done throughout a certain period of time, that be a semester, and school year, or even multiple years. I really like it because it shows off student achievement. I remember enjoying looking back at portfolios in high school when we were done with them. It was nice to see that I actually accomplished a lot of work throughout the semester, and some pieces of work reminded me of some fun memories I had in that class or what was going on in my life at the time I did it. Yes, not all materials will be very nostalgic, but it is a very good tool for teachers and students alike. They both can use it to track their/the student’s progress. One can track improvement by looking back at old work, and portfolios put all of the work in the same spot for easy reference. The other two things, rubrics and self-assessment, are both things that almost every single class I have taken had. They are nice additions to classes, but at this point I almost expect them. Rubrics are necessary so students know exactly what is expected of them, and self-assessment will foster future growth of a student.Lydia
There are three types of assessment that should always be used in a classroom. Those three things include portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. These three things are important because a student can reflect back on what they learned with a portfolio, get feedback from a teacher with a rubric and give themselves feedback on what they think they can do better on the next assessment. These are all assessments that go out of the box compared to standardized testing yet they all show student, parents, and fellow teachers what a certain student has learned and shows how they can apply the knowledge to what they enjoy. I think this will affect my classroom because students get a learning experience that they can get multiple ways of feedback and will want to look back over the year of what they have accomplished and what they can do better for next time.Out of the three assessment strategies I thought it was interesting how they laid out the rubric process for differentiated instruction. If I am a teacher that only gives standards for the highest grade possible and nothing else students will want to meet that mark because there are no other exceptions or expectations. This will affect the class because students will try to get the most out of the learning experience instead of trying to figure out what the minimal amount they have to do to pass the project. As a teacher this will affect me because I will see students wanting to learn more and I will know that I should not give students the idea that they can only do minimal work to pass. This will show the students that I am here for them and that I want them to succeed on their assessments.
Shane
In this chapter we are shown the three main ways to assess students. We can assess our students through portfolios, rubrics and self assessment. None of these were really all that surprising because this is how I have been graded for years. This chapter basically breaks down into why and how we are supposed to use them. As a future teacher I liked the idea of portfolios more than anything. As a social studies teacher it would make sense to keep all of the work students have done over the semester because it should all correlate. If we are trying to account for each student as an individual learner, I personally believe giving them a rubric with set goals to hit seems a little too clipboard. We need to account for learning style too. Each student is going to learn differently, having a more open ended assessment like a portfolio just makes more sense to me. In a portfolio we can look at the progress that starts from the beginning and see how the student reached their goals from start to finish. In a portfolio we can see the not only the growth but the consistency of the work and see how well students are actually mastering the content that we have gone over. Students can reflect and self assess their progress from here as well. I personally believe a portfolio gets across the big picture.Sara
In chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal we look at the three main types of assessments. Portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment are all very important and useful tools for a teacher to utilize. A portfolio allows students to collect their work over a set timeframe and put it all together in one piece. This makes it easier for students to see the progression that they have made over this time period and helps them reflect on what they have learned. It also allows students to be creative and show their personality by designing the portfolio their selves. While portfolios are very useful in the classroom, I don’t see myself using them very often in the math classroom. I don’t think a portfolio is the right type of assessment for that setting and it could be confusing for students.Rubrics are a huge part of communicating with students what is expected of them. It is important that if a teacher is going to have a rubric that it be clear and concise, and truly state what the teacher wants. Rubrics can be very helpful for students if they are done correctly, however a poorly written rubric can be very bad for a student while doing any type of assignment. I am the type of person who enjoys knowing exactly what is expected of me so I do think I will use rubrics quite often in my classroom.
Self-assessment allows a teacher to see how a student is thinking and what their thoughts on their progress is. This can be very helpful because it allows a student to be honest and teacher can see if there are areas the student needs to work on or if a particular subject that they are struggling in. Because there are so many concepts in math I see myself using self-assessment frequently so students can reflect on themselves.
Katelin
This chapter I found to be very important to me in my teaching techniques. I am not sure I really believe in tests completely, so finding different types of assessments I can use and how to effectively use them to assess a student is really important for me. Portfolios are a really good way to have a student to have to reflect on their own work and think of it as quality, and not just a rushed product. They have to look at what they have accomplished and learn, and show others their accomplishments and understandings. Students can set goals and take charge of their learning. This is a great way to look at the mastery of students progress in class and they are a nice, simple thing to show parents. Rubrics are something that all students seem to be familiar with regardless of what class they used them in. I am not sure on what my thoughts really are on how often I will use these in my class. I like the idea of being consistent in grading and making sure the rubrics don’t have loopholes where the students aren’t clear on where their work will fall under. I absolutely love the idea of student self assessment and students assessing how the teacher has done. Students really do not realize they need to improve without looking back on their work. The problem is, I know when I was in school and I was told to assess myself, I wrote down any stupid thing I could find. I would need to prove students how important it really is for them to find something they can really work on and try to encourage them to do so, also find something they did really well and keep doing that.Cooper
This chapter goes over three different methods of assessment portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. Each of these have a place in the classroom, but the two that stuck out to me specifically were portfolios and self-assessment. Portfolios intrigued me because not only are they a great way for students to measure progress and visualize their growth and hard work, but it also is a great way of introducing organization into the classroom. As someone who is not necessarily geared toward organization I will try to welcome any opportunity for bringing those aspects into my classroom as I come across. By making students catalog their work not only would I be giving them the opportunity to view their work as a collective, but hopefully broadening my own horizons as a multi-faceted educator. In addition to portfolios I also thought self assessment was an interesting method to use in the classroom. I think it’s important student’s look at their own work critically and don’t just feel they can hand it in and forget about it. I think this could definitely play into using portfolios, when students look at all of their work put together they can assess how far they have come in the class and maybe about what goals they were or weren’t able to reach. I personally don’t see these methods as exclusive and I could see myself employing all three and probably many others in my future classroom.
Laura
Although it wasn’t stated, I’m assuming that it is best for teachers to use a combination of the three types of assessment (portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessments) discussed in this chapter. I especially like the idea of portfolios, but I’ve never really liked rubrics. However, because they are so different from each other, they are probably each useful in their own way. In my future classroom, for example, I might use portfolios to gauge the progress of my students’ writing abilities while using rubrics to grade the individual pieces that go into the portfolio. I would definitely place more weight on the grade of the entire portfolio, however, versus the grade of each individual piece. I like to think of rubrics more as guides for students than strict criteria for which they will be graded. I understand that it’s important to be consistent, but if a student reads too much in a rubric, they may “settle” for the average requirements just to get a decent grade and not take the time to push themselves to hand in their best work. As a student, I often found (and still do find) rubrics to be confusing and daunting. Sometimes I wouldn’t even read them thoroughly because I felt like I would rather just put my best effort forward and “hope” that met the criteria. I’m assuming there are others out there like me, and I’ll keep that in mind as a teacher by not relying too heavily on rubrics. I will value the final form of assessment that the chapter discussed, student self-assessment, because it will give me an idea of what my students feel they are capable of along with how they view their own work and effort.Rhi
This chapter was very straight forward. First it discussed portfolios and how helpful they can be for keeping record of student work and the analyzing of a students learning. In another class we discussed ways to better incorporate health into our classrooms. I think that adding a health aspect to a portfolio would make tremendous changes in how our students health is evaluated. Not many schools take into consideration the overall health of their students. It’s not only important to teach students academics, it’s also important for them to be focused on healthy foods and keeping active. If a student is not healthy, it is hard for them to focus on academics because they are focused on other things, such as: hunger, weight, fatigue, distractions, etc. All of these can be improved just by helping our students to understand what is important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It is hard for many families because they think that all healthy food is expensive, but there are ways for students to get the nutrients that they need on a low budget. This is an area that I believe health teachers need to focus more on, which is helping our student’s parents in finding what foods are reasonably priced instead of just sending home a paper of fruits and veggies their child should be eating. We have to work with these parents to create healthier diets for the students, so instead of them feeling like they’re failures and teachers are just trying to tell them how to parent, we set up a teacher-parent trusting relationship where we find the happy medium and want what’s best for the students.